## 30.16. Instead of Changing History Characters

If you need to use `!` (or your current history character) for a command (for example, if you still use uucp or send mail to someone who does, using the command-line mail (Section 1.21) command), you can type a backslash (`\`) before each history character. You can also drop into the Bourne or Korn shell quickly -- assuming that you aren't on a system that has replaced the real Bourne shell with a shell like bash that has history substitution built in. (If you're stuck, you can use the command `set +H` in bash; this disables history substitution.) Either of these are probably easier than changing histchars. For example:

>     % mail ora\!ishtar\!sally < file1    Quote the !s
>     % sh                                 Start the Bourne shell
>     $ mail ora!ishtar!sally < file1      ! not special here
>     $ exit                               Quit the Bourne shell
>     %                                    And back to the C shell

The original Bourne shell doesn't have any kind of history substitution, so `!` doesn't mean anything special; it's just a regular character.

By the way, if you have a window system, you can probably copy and paste the command line (Section 28.10) instead of using shell history.

-- ML

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